Tag: Camille

One of the best parts about Josh’s course is that class starts at 7am so he often gets home by 2 in the afternoon. Not so great for him to have to get up early, but fun for us to be able to go do things as a threesome before the boys come home from school. 
One thing we like to do is go sit at Starbucks. We could drink coffee at home, and at $4.50 for a grande cap it’s not cheap, but it’s one of the few places where the employees speak Arabic and they all know Josh by now and chat with him as they make our drinks.


We decided Camille is finally old enough to get her own drink. We started her on the steamed milk — we’ll save the harder stuff for when she turns 2.

I love that the mall is modern and has places like Chili’s and Cinnabon, but the people walking by in dishdashas and abayas show that we’re clearly in the Middle East.

She’s mad because she wants to hold the cup herself, but she keeps trying to turn it upside down or take the straw out so Josh is trying to “help” her. I’ve always told people that she has no problem telling us exactly how she feels . . .

Baby girl loves books. I think Calvin was the same way as a baby, but it’s hard to remember that far back. I’m positive that Carter was not excited about books and all I remember about Caleb and books at this age is he liked taking them and throwing them in the bathtub. When it was full of water. I went 30 years without ever having to pay for a library book and once he came along I had to pay for 3 in 3 months. That stopped my trips to the library until he outgrew the baptizing books phase.

But I see a blooming bibliophile in my little girl and it makes me happy.

Carter is supposed to read for 30 minutes every night for homework. So what book did he check out from the library? The Guinness Book of World Records. I suspect he’s just looking at the pictures of the man with the longest fingernails or the most facial piercings (really gross, btw) instead of actually reading the text. I asked him to bring home something different so next time he checked out Ripley’s Believe It Or Not instead. :sigh: He also counted this time that he was “reading to Camille” as part of the 30 minutes. He is not a fan of the books.
***In the background you can hear Calvin showing off his superior spelling skills. Great reader, horrible speller. 

(The “Hallelujah” is because he finished his homework.)

more music

I set this to upload to YouTube the other day because I was going to post both videos at the same time, but for some reason this one took forever (over an hour) so I wandered off and forgot about it until now.

This is for those of you who wrote to tell me that you keep watching the other one over and over again.

Happy Birthday to me . . .

One of Carter’s birthday presents was the surprise of many musical cards. The best part about them is Camille is fascinated by these “books” that play music and will sit and listen and open and close them over and over again. Anything that keeps her out of the toilet is a present to me.

Mother’s Little Helper

Yesterday morning was “sleep in” day. Or at least it was for Josh and me. When we woke up around 7:45 we found Caleb and Camille in our bedroom playing with the train on the floor. Brilliant. Caleb was even dressed in his PE uniform because he thought it was a school day.

When we told Caleb that he didn’t have school since it was “Saturday” and he could go downstairs to have breakfast he said, “Oh! Camille and I already had breakfast.”
Say what now?
“Yeah, Camille woke me up a long time ago. She leaned over the edge of her crib and pulled my hair to wake me up. Then we played for a little while and then we went downstairs and ate yogurt. Then we played downstairs for a while and then we came up here.”

I can just see it now. Caleb staggering from the weight of carrying a baby that weighs half of his body weight, fumbling with the baby gate, blindly walking down two sets of marble stairs, lifting her in and out of the high chair, feeding her . . . any number of things could have gone horribly wrong in that scenario. Add in unsupervised play with a baby that loves to poke at electrical outlets and put things in her mouth and it seems like a miracle that they both came out of it unscathed.

Of course, I didn’t say any of that. “Thanks for being such a good big brother. I bet she loved that. Next time just ask me before you take her downstairs or feed her, OK?”

Caleb has always been one to see a need and act on it. A real do-er. I better make sure he knows that he’s not allowed to give her a bath until she can at least get in and out of the tub by herself.


 

***I’m surprised they didn’t break out the ice shaver and have sno-cones for breakfast